NSW Labor’s Faustian pact.

In choosing politics over principle, the NSW branch of the Australian Labor Party has moved further down the treacherous path laid out by Bob Carr and his ilk. That path is contrary to the interests of peace for the people of the Middle East and to the values of freedom and liberal democracy for which the ALP purportedly stands.

Seventy years ago, under Labor’s Dr. H. V. Evatt, Australia was at the forefront of the United Nations resolutions which supported the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two States – one Jewish and one Arab – and which lead to the establishment of the State of Israel.

The Arab governments of the region rejected the UN resolution and in the decades since have fought several wars with the aim of destroying the world’s only Jewish State. They have done little if anything to prepare Palestinian Arabs for statehood, self-government or the establishment of a working civil society that might live in peace with its neighbour.

Under governments of both sides of politics Australia has a proud and admirable record for supporting Israel as the only democratic nation in the Middle East. As a result, Australia and Israel have enjoyed a strong, warm and constructive relationship which continues to this day.

With an eye toward broadening their electoral support in western Sydney, forces within the NSW State ALP are prepared to enter into a Faustian bargain to abandon bipartisanship in favour of the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian State, presumably one that would be administered by an undemocratic polity which having had almost twenty years of significant self-rule remains deeply divided and under the pervasive influence of terror groups seeking the demise of Israel.

credit: i24NEWS

To be clear, the motion pushed by Carr and his cronies does not demand any concessions from a Palestinian leadership which has repeatedly used terror to achieve its ends, most recently in the call for days of rage to protest the implementation of security measures at the Temple Mount which by any world standard should not have raised an eyebrow let alone a call to murder. The motion does not demand negotiation, it does not demand Palestinian recognition of Jewish Israel and most importantly does not demand renunciation of terror as preconditions for recognition.
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We should not forget that the Palestinians are currently ruled in Ramallah by Mahmoud Abbas, a corrupt despot who shuns democracy in the twelfth year of a four-year term, and in Gaza by an equally corrupt proscribed terrorist group, Hamas, which is openly antisemitic and calls for Israel’s destruction.

Given what has transpired recently at the state ALP conferences of Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania there threatens a critical mass of votes to change the federal position. The claim of federal ALP politicians that the NSW motion will not impact Labor’s foreign policy ignores the inexorability and wilful blindness of the pro-Palestinian camp of the ALP.

The Jewish community and all others who are truly concerned about the fate of the only real democracy in the Middle East should be alarmed at the swiftness with which it appears that the ALP has sacrificed its support of liberal democratic values over a period of 70 years in favour of the lure of votes in the western suburbs of Sydney.

Credit is owed to those NSW ALP members who stood against this motion, especially Michael Forshaw and Mike Kelly, who had the courage to speak out about this matter on the conference floor.

The result however, is a defeat for values and principle. Supporters of Israel must be forthright in their condemnation of the ALP on this issue because the values we share with Israel – democracy, the rule of law, gender rights, freedom of expression, a free press and an independent judiciary are all things which do not exist under either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. In embracing the unilateral establishment of a Palestinian state the ALP is forsaking its own and indeed Australian values.

Dr. Danny Lamm is the President of the Zionist Federation of Australia. This article originally appeared in the Australian Jewish News

12 comments

It pains me to correct Danny Lamm who made the following statement in his article:
“Seventy years ago, under Labor’s Dr. H. V. Evatt, Australia was at the forefront of the United Nations resolutions which supported the partition of the British Mandate of Palestine into two States – one Jewish and one Arab – and which lead to the establishment of the State of Israel.”

In fact the 1947 UN Partition Resolution only dealt with the partition of about 23% of the territory of the British Mandate for Palestine.

The other 77% had become an independent Arabs-only Jew-free sovereign State just one year earlier in 1946 – being renamed the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan (today called Jordan).

The ZFA needs to get its act together if it wishes to have any role in countering the Labor Party position calling for the unilateral recognition of a second Arab state in the territory of the Mandate for Palestine – in addition to Jordan.

The claim that the Palestinian Arabs are stateless in 2017 is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated in the ongoing Jewish-Arab conflict. It appears such claim has been swallowed hook line and sinker by the NSW Labor Party at the instigation of a former Premier and Foreign Minister Bob Carr. Both urgently need to be presented with the above historic, geographic and demogarphic facts to counter the fictions of Arab propaganda that appear to have influenced the Labor Party change in its long held principled position

@David Singer……True, True, True…..You are about the only person I have ever encountered who has made reference to, or seems to know, that a large chunk of the British Palestinian Mandate was seceded/given over to Transjordan in 1946.

As much as Dr. Evatt bore the acclaim and kudos…in the form of being known as the ‘Midwife’ to Israel’s birth, he only really involved himself with the partition division of the small chunk that remained.

I didn’t know the exact percentages, until cited by you in your comment. Thank you for the information.

I can assure you I am not the only person that has been aware of the true history and geography of “Palestine” and how that history and geography has been knowingly distorted by Arab propaganda.

Professor Julius Stone – for example – wrote this on 27 July 1982 – yes 35 years ago:

“And the most recent and authoritative study by the Princeton historian , Bernard Lewis, (1981 International History Review, vol. II pp 1-12) shows that at least up to 1920 the term “Palestine” included both banks of the Jordan – that is, the present territory of Jordan and Israel and the “West Bank” and Gaza. The Jordan River, Lewis points, out was never even an administrative boundary.”

… and further on in the same article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Even after nearly four-fifths of the area of Palestine was cut away from the pledge to establish a Jewish National Home in 1922, to make the State of Jordan, the Arabs of the West Bank continued to serve the Transjordanian administration and moved back and forth freely across the river. Standard British histories like those of Sir Alec Kirkbride confirm that the east side of the river, that is, Transjordan, was seen as a place for “resettlement of Arabs once the National Home for the Jews in Palestine …became an accomplished fact”

Even Yasser Arafat told the New York Review of Books on 25 June 1987:

” Jordan and Palestine until 1945 were one State, actually. After the Second World War, Churchill himself said, “This is Transjordan, and this is Palestine. Before that Jordan was an emirate ..completely part of Palestine”

I can quote you sources ad infinitum – Jewish and Arab – that point out the identical facts.

Expunging history and geography has become an art form with the PLO. Look what is occurring in Jerusalem and Hebron right now – and has occurred with Joseph’s tomb and Rachel’s tomb.

I am still waiting for someone to tell me why the Arabs need two States in former Palestine – perhaps even three to accommodate Hamas in Gaza?

Can you imagine the outcry if anyone dared to call for two Jewish States in Palestine?

Two peoples – the Jews and the Arabs – each have their own States in former Palestine called Israel and Jordan. They – and Egypt – should sit down and negotiate the allocation of sovereignty of the West Bank and Gaza – the last remaining 5% of the Mandate territory – between their respective States.

Trying to create a second Arab State in former Palestine – in addition to Jordan – has been the undoing of the UN, UNESCO and the EU.

When will they wake up to the havoc they have wreaked for the last 40 years?

Thank you for the detail of your information….I once worked on Cyprus; in the late 60’s, early 70’s, when a British Army Officer, in general conversation, took me through what you have elaborated on above.

He was much older than myself at the time, having served in the then British Palestinian Mandate Forces for many years prior….before, and up to the establishment of current day Israel.

For the way I received the gist of what he was telling me, I correctly or not, thought, “those bloody Poms….double dealing the new State of Israel out of a percentage division of the partition carve up, of a large swathe of what had been included in the initial Mandate the Brits had administered.”.

He clearly stated the Jordan River was never a definitive boundary within the old Mandate make up structure.

In essence, my assumption was near to the truth….given as you said the Arabs…be they Jordan, or the mob who were domiciled in what is now Israel proper, do appear to have had two…possible three bites, at the pies carve up….and still rant on about their ‘freehold’ ownership of so much of the Judean hill country.

Undoubtedly, you are correct when you say it is commonly known, probably more so to those who had interested themselves….though to the general audience, for the number of ‘debates’ I had with others over the years, there does appear a lot of folk who are not as informed as yourself.

I was as good as told I was talking rubbish…when repeating what the Pommie Officer took me through….and this was the retort with a good number of Jewish folk,, plus some Arabs I periodically yakked with…..and ditto to your sentiments as to the havoc that has been sustained over the past 40/50 years.

Once again, thank you for the enlightenment….I feel vindicated for the Pom, who after a period of time, I started to doubt as to whether he was telling me a load of bunkum.

What you might also be surprised to learn is that between the PLO’s formation in 1964 right through to 1968 the PLO never claimed sovereignty in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

What does that say about the strength of its claim to sovereignty in these areas in 2017?

You may also not know that the Palestinian Arab State the world seems fixated on seeing established in 2017 could have been created at any time between 1948 and 1967 with the stroke of an Arab League pen when not one Jew lived in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza – as they all had been forcibly evicted and these areas made “Judenrein” by six Arab invading and occupying forces fromTransjordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.

Seems the world accepts Arab conquest and occupation but takes a different view when it comes to the Jews defending themselves against such illegal Arab actions.

Those double standards are coming back to haunt the West and the Arabs big time in 2017.

Ignoring history, geography and demography comes at great risk – and the EU in particular, the UN, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq are now paying the price running into hundreds of billions of dollars racked up between 1948 and 2017 – not to mention the inhumane suffering wrought on both Jews and Arabs during that period.

It all goes back to what Danny Lamm incorrectly failed to apparently understand – the Arab rejection of the UN 1947 partition plan to create one Jewish State and one Arab State in 23% of the territory of the Mandate – the other 77% having already become an independent Arab state in 1946.

Had that UN offer been accepted in 1947 the Middle East would have been paradise in 2017 instead of hell. It is now too late for that opportunity to arise again.

I repeat – the only solution with any chance of succeeding in 2017 involves direct negotiations between Egypt, Israel and Jordan to allocate sovereignty ofJudea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza between their three respective States.

The sooner the EU especially faces up to this solution being the only solution capable of working the sooner those tripartite negotiations might hopefully occur.

Graham, you might be interested in a documentary film (available on DVD also) that was premiered recently in Sydney. It’s titled, “Whose Land?”
It was produced and directed by a Christian, Hugh Clayton, and explores in detail the political rights (under secular international law) of the Jewish People in The Entire Land of Israel.

The ALP’s action is not motivated by its wish to buttress electoral support.
The people whom it is designed to please will always vote for the ALP for reasons that have nothing to do with Middle Eastern affairs.
No; the ALP’s action is motivated by malice towards the nation-state of the people who in left-wing mythology are regarded as the archetypal exploitative worshippers of money.
Karl Marx, the archetypal Jewish antisemite , popularised that idea.
(Incidentally, another of the fathers of Socialism, Moshe Hess, at one stage of his life, published even cruder libels against the people from whom he sprang; unlike Marx, however, Hess repented and repudiated his previous slanders.)

Jews Down Under

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